Wireless communication systems divide the entire coverage into a plurality of cells and cover the cells through Node Bs or Base Stations (BSs), respectively, to support uninterrupted continuous communication service for Mobile Stations (MSs) or User Equipment (UE), moving between cells. An improved wireless communication system increases a cell density by using small-cell BSs serving as relay nodes between a BS and an MS, thereby increasing transmission capacity, solving a shadow area problem, and achieving offloading. In this system, it may be cost-inefficient to connect the respective small-cell BSs in a wired manner, such that it is highly likely that the small-cell BSs may be configured as a small-cell network through a wireless backhaul. In the wireless backhaul network, multi-hop transmission is performed from an existing BS connected to a wired network, that is, a macro BS, to an MS through one or more small-cell BSs in a wireless manner.
In a multi-hop network, the core technology is to find out how each relay node forwards a received signal to the next hop. Amplify-Forward (AF), Decode-Forward (DF), and Compress-Forward (CF) are existing schemes for processing received signals at relay nodes. However, these schemes show the best performance only for a particular network topology (for example, three nodes) and a particular channel gain, failing to show stable performance in a structure where connection between a macro BS and an MS varies at any time, such as in a wireless multi-hop network.
For example, in case of DF, decoding is performed in each link, such that after a received signal is decoded in each hop by using an existing single hop channel code, the received signal is encoded using the single hop channel code in the next hop. However, it is known that transmission performed optimally for each link operates very inefficiently, and signal transmission is needed to enable joint decoding on the overall network.
In other words, there exists a need for a multi-hop transmission technique which is applicable to various networks, including existing network coding, based on an arbitrary network topology and a general framework for a channel gain, and is capable of achieving proper performance regardless of a channel gain and a network topology.
The above information is presented as background information only to assist with an understanding of the present disclosure. No determination has been made, and no assertion is made, as to whether any of the above might be applicable as prior art with regard to the present disclosure.